Bury

Understand

thumb|350px|Bury Town Hall Bury grew rapidly from the 18th century as a textile town, at first for wool but later chiefly for cotton. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850) was born here to a wealthy textile family, and founded the modern police force and served as British prime minister. The lot of Bury's mill workers was less fortunate, as the 19th-century town became overcrowded, squalid and rife with disease. Still they made a living, until the mid 20th century when the cotton industry collapsed, and much of the town became derelict. Historically within Lancashire, in 1974 Bury became part of Greater Manchester, and is nowadays primarily a commuter town. The borough also includes the more affluent suburbs of Prestwich and Whitefield (with long-established Jewish populations), Radcliffe, and (the most scenic) Ramsbottom on the edge of the Pennines.

Bury is indelibly linked to the black pudding, produced and consumed here in industrial quantities, and hurled over record-breaking distances at an annual contest in Ramsbottom.

Get in

See Manchester#Get_in for long-distance travel options. From Manchester Airport () take the train or bus to Piccadilly then Bus 135 or tram to Bury.

Get around

See Manchester#Get_around for ticket deals and passes for the bus & tram network.

See

thumb|300px|Bury Parish Church is a village two miles south of Bury, on the same tram route. It's post-industrial and run-down, but see the 14th- to 15th-century Church of St Mary (Anglican) and the crumbling remnants of 15th-century Radcliffe Tower. is a well-preserved mill village six miles north of Bury, hemmed in by the steep Pennine slopes, where streams surged down to power the mills. Its 19th-century Grant family may have been the model for the Cheeryble brothers in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby. They practised a rapaciously efficient "Truck System": employees were not paid in cash but in tokens that could only be spent on beer in the company-owned pub.

Do

thumb|300px|Bolton Street - Ramsbottom's main thoroughfare. is a park and caravan site on the riverside two miles north of town. It has canoeing, kayaking, angling, other water activities, climbing, ropes, adventure playground and obstacle course. Steam trains of the East Lancashire Railway chuff through. Irwell Sculpture Trail is a in length footpath from The Quays to Bacup dotted with large sculptures. On the section around Bury find Trinity, Our Seats Are Almost Touching, the Outwood Colliery group, Nailing Home, the barge in the bulrushes, As if I Were a River, Seek and You Will Find, In the Picture, Remnant Kings, Whispering Wall, Gateway, Willow Tree, Bocholt Tree, and Logarhythms. on Harcles (or Holcombe) Hill commemorates Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850); the tower has a viewing platform and you may be able to ascend further. Lots of footpaths with valley views all around. While historians would recommend you don't call it the "Peel tower" [as that refers to a type of stubby medieval fort common across northern England and lowland Scotland], residents prefer to use this name. In both Holcombe and Ramsbottom, you may see a lot of memorabilia to commemorate what they commonly refer to as “Peel tower”. Hiking: lots of other hikes in the West Pennine Moors. Use OS Landranger map 109 Manchester and 103 Blackburn. Watch football but alas not at Bury FC, you'll have to head into Manchester. In 2019 Bury won promotion to League One, the third tier of English soccer, but they colla…

Buy

thumb|300px|Market Place in the centre of Ramsbottom.

Eat

The restaurant at The Village Hotel offers good food and friendly service. The Rock incorporates apartments, a cinema, a 25-lane bowling complex and many high street stores, bars, cafes and restaurants. The restaurant and cafe bar at the Bury Met Theatre is good and also popular, as a bar, in the evenings.

Drink

thumb|300px|East Lancashire Railway at Ramsbottom

Sleep

There are two Premier Inns. The Manchester Bury Premier Inn is 200 yards south of Bury town centre, off Duke St by the junction of A58 ring road and A56. The Manchester Prestwich Premier Inn is on Bury New Road A56 just south of Junction 17 of M60, midway between Prestwich and Whitefield and next to TGI Fridays.

Connect

As of June 2021, Bury has 4G from O2, Three and Vodafone, and 5G from EE.